Jump to content


Stephen Fortner

MPN Advisory Board
  • Posts

    2,771
  • Joined

  • Last visited

1 Follower

About Stephen Fortner

  • Birthday 07/25/1969

Converted

  • occupation
    Editor-Publisher
  • hobbies
    Keyboards and Synths
  • Location
    Burlington, Vermont, UNITED STATES
  • custom_title
    But who is number 1 ? ...

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

  1. Who can spill the tea? https://kurzweil.com/2024/02/08/the-k20-series/
  2. I’m trying to get a big picture as to whatever community might be out there devoted to keeping the Kurzweil K250 up and running. A friend is working on a “restomod” project, part of which is a board that would make all sounds and sample data available at once. among other improvements.
  3. I think price will determine the popularity of the Mirror, if that is indeed what it is called. It seems we’re looking at an 8-voice, two-oscillator synth, which would have to be pretty compelling to replace my Prophet Rev-2 (even if I only had the 8-voice version; I have the 16). Quite curious to see where this goes.
  4. Jerry, I do know about Brian’s rig with an amp head but I could swear I’ve seen him play through a braked Leslie at the Baked Potato. Guess we could ask him … Ok back to my audio comparison. It took some setup but getting there!
  5. Well, I’ll be damned. I thought even my old Electro 2 did the 1' drawbar cancel with percussion active but I could be having a Mandela effect memory. As of firmware 0.98, yeah, there’s no menu item I can find that toggles this. In practice I don’t think it would affect my playing at all, but from an authenticity standpoint, it’s a weird and presumably easily fixable omission.
  6. I missed NAMM as some of you know, and stand happily corrected. Casio actually did the condiment! Bummed I didn't get some.
  7. As far as samples, modeling, and divisi programming have come, I still never try to fake a horn section in the sense of making it sound like acoustic instruments. And I had this exact issue in a cover band that had one trumpet and one tenor sax. We were also doing tunes like "You Got To Funkifize" and "Getaway" by EWF. I prefer unapologetic sawtooth synth brass and/or Hammond with all drawbars out. I don't go for too much amplitude or filter envelope on the attack phase because at a live gig that's going to get lost and make things sound wheezy. You just want to fill up the spectrum with those bright harmonics and slap people in the face audio-wise.
  8. This is the name of one of the colors available for the new Casio Privia PX-S7000. Now, Casio may have missed an opportunity in the form of getting a white-label food products company to make a nice honey dijon spread and hand it out as swag at NAMM, but that's not even what I'm posting about. Other than seeming very whimsically Japanese, the name they chose for this color stuck in my head and had a familiar ring to it. There was a cadence about the vowels I associated with piano for some reason. Then it hit me: Thelonious Monk. Harmonious Mustard. Thelonious Monk. Harmonious Mustard. If this was intentional, someone at Casio is a genius. If not, the serendipity is remarkable.
  9. There are two standards here. One is being in the room close to a spinning Leslie as a player or listener. Between AM and FM, direct and reflected sound, and subtly shifting harmonics due to phase, it’s an impossible complex acoustic cocktail. Then there’s the more approachable standard of listening to a Leslie on a record (or from the crowd at a concert) miked and put through a stereo PA system. A lot of us fell in love with the sound under those conditions, thanks to a track from Steppenwolf or Santana or Deep Purple or Jimmy Smith. So the richness and emotion is still there. In short, you can only really evaluate sims from the second standard. When I really want to jam out and blow off stress, I fire up the 142 though.
  10. Keyboards are a commodity item in a way. Someone might pay $5k for a guitar on the spot if they pick it up and connect with the feel and it hits them emotionally — even if it’s identical on paper to other units of the same model. But a Motif or Fantom or Kurzweil or Kronos really just does do what any other Motif or Fantom or Kurzweil or Kronos does. I can also tell you first hand from talking to executive management at all the major retail chains and product managers from the keyboard companies: People taking two hours of a salesperson’s time to kick tires and then buying the item online to save sales tax was a factor. Not so much anymore because most states now collect sales tax on online orders, but the damage was done. So you’re a store manager deciding what to devote floor space to, and what kind of customer. I’m not saying we all suck but I was that obnoxious little shit through a lot of my younger years.
  11. Rotary Simulation The rotary simulation on the Stage 4 is up there with the better ones that are built into clonewheel organs. In Nord fashion, it keeps the parameters tidy compared to simulations that let you tweak every little detail of rotor acceleration, mic technique distance, and the like. In the hands of a Jim Alfredson or David Weiser, that kind of depth can be very useful for designing a precise virtual Leslie in your mind’s ear. In my hands, it offers me just enough rope to hang myself, so I kind of like the Nord’s approach. We’re in an early firmware version, so all of this may expand. Panel controls include on/off for the organ section, a Drive knob, Stop (brake), and Slow/Fast, which also has a dedicated ¼-inch input around back. A couple of notable things: - Drive doesn’t add as much buzz and hair as some other sims. It’s max setting is crunchy but relatively civilized, like so: - NS4 full drawbars rotary drive max#04.wav - Shift-stop lets you select where the rotors park when braked: free, front center, front left, front right, back center, back left, or back right. This is cool if you’re going for that Brian Auger sound and want consistent frequency response when the rotors aren’t moving. The rest of the rotary parameters are in the sound menu. These are the pages, followed by the parameter name, followed by the values for that parameter as of firmware version 0.98. 7: Rotary Speaker Type (122, 122 close) 8: Bass Rotor Speed (low, normal, high) 9: Bass Rotor Acceleration (low, normal, high) 10: Treble Horn Speed (low, normal, high) 11: Treble Horn Acceleration (low, normal, high) That’s it. Nothing for stereo spread, nothing for mic distance, etc. The closest thing is the Type selection, which does appear to give a closer-miked setup on a 122. Here’s me starting with 122 then switching to 122 close then repeating the switch one more time: 122 vs 122 close#04.wav Incidentally, the audio example in my previous post was recorded with the 122 type and everything set to “normal.” Here’s that same registration, switching between regular and close again, with C3 chorus. You can hear the little pop where I turn the value dial. 122 vs 122 close C3 chorus#02.wav Annnd let’s do a couple more full drawbars, 122 normal, everything else set to normal. Here’s no vibrato/chorus, rotary only: NS4 full drawbars 2 no vib-chor#01.wav Here’s the same with C3 chorus (Drive is back at zero on all these): NS4 full drawbars 2 C3 chorus#01.wav Next up, I’ll pull out some other clones and do some comparisons. This is not as structured as what we’re planning for the big simulation roundup; I just want to get it up here to put the NS4 in context. Want a registration or parameter combo I haven’t covered here? Just ask!
  12. HI friends, Working on writing up the rotary effect section for you. In the meantime here’s the first audio example I dashed off for the rotary simulation. Just some fat major-seventh chords. Full drawbars, toggling rotary back and forth, no vibrato-chorus: NS4 Full Drawbars no vib-chor#01.wav Full drawbars, toggling rotary back and forth, C3 chorus: NS4 Full Drawbars C3 chorus#03.wav
  13. I’m liking the idea about putting real Leslies in the roundup as a reference. I mean for everything to be labeled and identified, but maybe we could have a “blind” post or adjunct thread where people try to guess which audio examples are the real deal. Heck, maybe the first person to guess it correctly wins a prize if we could team up with somebody for a giveaway. Thinking 🤔 ...
  14. Organ Section Part 1 — Everything but the Leslie The Organ section of the Stage 4 has two parts and six organ models: B3, Vox, Farfisa, Pipe1, Pipe2, and B3 Bass, selected by Nord’s usual round-robin button. All organ models are lay-two-forearms-across-the-keys fully polyphonic. Importantly, you can select different organ models for parts A and B. You can have the Leslie simulation on any model, but both parts share it. The B3 model is of course where the majority of players will spend most of their time, but labels for the drawbars’ alternate behavior in Vox and Farfisa modes are printed in two rows above the drawbars, with the B3 footages below. In Farfisa mode, the drawbars become on/off stop tabs for the various voices. Speaking of drawbars, they’re not merely smooth faders with drawbar-shaped caps; they have just the right amount of click to feel like the “smooth” drawbars on vintage Hammond organs beginning with the B-3 and C-3. I’ll assume we’re all familiar with what pipe-equivalent pitches B-3 drawbars produce, but the user manual has handy diagrams relating these to a keyboard graphic to illustrate what pitches they trigger in each mode. It has similar diagrams for the Farfisa and Vox. I’m gonna do a quick overview of the non-B3 models first, then get to the main course. Farfisa: - Stops: Bass 16, String 16, Flute 8, Oboe 8, Trumpet 8, Flute 4, String 4, 2-2/3 - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus has four options: light/slow, light/fast, heavy/slow, heavy/fast. Vibrato is shared by parts A and B. Vox: - Drawbars: The Stage 4 makes all the drawbars for both manuals of the original Super Continental available for both parts A and B, but provides this diagram so you can use only those corresponding to the desired manual: - - As on the original, Roman numerals refer to a mixture of frequencies. The rightmost drawbar sets the balance between sine and sawtooth character for all the other drawbars. - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus has three options: original, less, and more Pipe 1 and 2: - Drawbars: Same pitches as the B3 model, and variable like a B-3, not just on/off. - Harmonic Percussion: not available - Vibrato/Chorus: Doesn’t add any sort of vibrato, but switches to a model with less precise tuning between the pipes, resulting in slight chorus effects between seemingly random frequencies - Pipe 1 has an immediate attack and thus sounds almost like the B-3 model, but without key click, tonewheel leakage, etc. - Pipe 2 has a softer attack and more closely imitates the principal tibia rank of a pipe organ B-3: Okay, now let’s talk about the B-3, which is the reason most of us are here. Drawbar for drawbar, it’s hard to fault this model for, well, anything. The drawbar tones sound right to my ears. So does the Harmonic Percussion, which has the correct triggering behavior (it had better, right?). The Vibrato/Chorus is tasty, but the C3 position could stand to be a bit deeper if my memory of many vintage Hammonds I’ve known is accurate. Vibrato/Chorus can be set independently for parts A and B. The Sound menu, accessed by pressing Shift-2 on the panel’s center section, houses a couple of parameters for which the organ section lacks dedicated controls: the all-important key click produced by the organ’s key contacts, and a choice of three tonewheel models with progressively more grunge and leakage: Clean, Vintage 1, and Vintage 2. Key click is not continuously variable as of the firmware I’m working with (v 0.98); there are only low and high options. There are also low and high settings in the Sound menu for the organ key trigger point — low matches that of the Piano and Synth sections and high raises the point in the key dip. Some organists find this adds an edge of authenticity in terms of the feel of a vintage Hammond. For any model, the Preset button toggles whether you’re playing the preset as stored in the program, or the live settings of the drawbars and other controls in the Organ section. (In the center section, you can hit a button that lets you dial through only Organ — or other section — presets instead of changing the multi-timbral program for all sections.) Hitting Shift-Preset matches the Preset settings to the physical drawbar positions. Note then when you’re in “live” (non-preset) operation, the LED ladders all turn off to let you know. B3 Bass: I saved this for the end because it’s sort of an adjunct to the B3 model. In this mode, the first two drawbars become the pair of pedal drawbars on a vintage Hammond: 16 and 8 feet. Except they kinda don’t. Maybe this is due to a pre-1.0 firmware version, but I found that the second drawbar was actually pulling a mixture of tones. I know — the pedal drawbars are supposed to produce harmonically richer sounds than the more-or-less sine waves of the drawbars for the manuals, but this was a bit too much to be accurate. In particular I was hearing to much of the fifth. Well, this post feels like it’s been a bit dry, just an overview of the Organ section’s features and a few first impressions. Could be I’m tired. Over the weekend we’re going to have more fun, digging into the Leslie simulation with some audio examples. This may be controversial, but for the aesthetic and emotional experience most of us want from the B-3 sound, I’ve always felt that the rotary simulation is 75 percent or more of the battle. I’ve put sounds from my original DX7 through a real Leslie, Vent, and Dynacord CLS-222 (wish I still had mine) and they had depth and balls. On the other hand, a poor rotary simulation takes me out of the song immediately, even if applied to a perfectly modeled organ.
×
×
  • Create New...